Bitrise, the Mobile DevOps company whose platform maximizes the overall business impact of apps for the world’s most sophisticated mobile organizations, announced the appointment of Steven Rees-Pullman as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). As mobile becomes responsible for a disproportionate share of overall business revenue, Rees-Pullman will interface with executive teams to drive awareness of the revenue potential of automation in mobile app development. Rees-Pullman previously served as Senior Vice President in the Auth0 product unit at Okta, an independent identity provider used by organizations including JetBlue, Nordstrom, Siemens, Slack and T-Mobile.
Though businesses are projected to generate over $900 billion in revenue from their mobile apps in 2023, the mobile practice is still largely viewed as the domain of engineers, with little crossover into the executive department. In some industries, mobile is even the dominant—or the only—revenue driver. For example, 75% of fintech’s revenue stems from mobile, according to the Mobile Product Success in Finance and Banking Report. This represents untapped opportunities for companies to optimize their overall revenue by optimizing the development and maintenance of their mobile apps. Doing this will require a top-down focus on and investment in mobile automation.
Currently, more than 6,000 companies across the globe use Bitrise’s Mobile DevOps platform to automate the most labor-intensive steps and processes in the mobile development lifecycle. Over the past eight years, the company’s focus has been on driving awareness of the benefits of automation in mobile app development among engineering teams.
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In his role as CRO, Rees-Pullman will work to expand this awareness among high-level executives, including financial and decision-making departments, to ensure that the direct connection between mobile and overall business revenue is understood across entire organizations.
He will specifically work to create visibility into how activities like prioritizing mobile innovation, accelerating mobile release cycles, introducing dedicated Mobile DevOps teams, and automating key processes in app development directly impact the KPIs that lead to overall revenue growth. Among them: increased user adoption, improved app store rankings, and higher customer engagement.
“It’s hard for any company to ignore the major shift in consumers’ preferences towards mobile over other digital channels. And because of this, they’re going to need to shift their own approaches to mobile operations to reflect the revenue potential and reality mobile holds for their organizations,” said Rees-Pullman. “It’s an exciting time to be a part of a company that is both enabling and educating the market on this holistic shift.”
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Bitrise’s Mobile DevOps platform alleviates time-consuming manual tasks that slow down the development process, including testing, building, and other steps across the release cycle. This frees up engineers to focus on larger product innovation and enables them to expedite the rate of their app store releases, to outpace competitors. Now, the company seeks to align its positive impact on the performance of companies’ apps with their overall revenue.
“Steven’s experience driving growth from a business perspective is a direct complement to the work we’re doing technologically to increase the overall impact that companies see from their mobile apps,” said Barnbas Birmacher, CEO and co-founder of Bitrise. “Addressing business and technology as a single unit, rather than in siloes, is what will ultimately allow us to continue building a Mobile DevOps ecosystem that impacts organizations at large—not just engineers and software developers.”
In his previous role at Auth0, Rees-Pullman was the first executive to oversee the company’s international business, growing it to account for nearly half of Auth0’s global revenue. He worked with Auth0 through its later acquisition by Okta for $6.5 billion in 2021. Rees-Pullman has also held leadership positions with software development companies including K2, which has since been acquired by Nintex, as well as SumTotal, Cogniti and Infor.
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